


you and me in the war of the end times

by stickthelanding



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Grace-Powered Orgasms (Supernatural), Canon Universe, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, M/M, Marijuana, Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning, a little Endverse detour but it's not the main focus, set in some nebulous time during s11 post-darkness but pre-Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:34:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28699983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickthelanding/pseuds/stickthelanding
Summary: "You gonna adopt it?" Dean asks, idly kicking a piece of stray terracotta with his right foot."I guess so," Cas sighs a little bit as he gets up from the floor, more from the balancing act of holding the plant than from any physical effort. "it may have survived all this but it's looking a little worse for wear and I'm confident I could care for it."or: Dean and Cas' close encounters with weed over the years come to a head when Cas finds a weed plant and brings it back to the bunker.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 45
Kudos: 272





	you and me in the war of the end times

**Author's Note:**

> endless thanks to heath for helping me figure out US geography and fitz for keeping me company during word sprints while I wrote this. 
> 
> title from calamity song by the decemberists.

Cas finds the plant in Colorado — _the devil's lettuce_ , Dean jokingly calls it when Cas crouches to pick up the plant pot from the floor. They've just wrapped up a job and it was easy enough, but the ensuing fight resulted in the latest victim's veranda slash greenhouse looking like a stop on a hurricane's path. 

The room is littered with plants and broken terracotta from the corresponding pots — Dean carefully steps over one of them which he knows is a ficus from a trip he and Cas took to a plant nursery a few months back when he was looking for easy plants to grow. _These need only low light_ , Cas had explained while he examined the leaves. 

In the greenhouse, a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth at the scene in front of him; Cas, holy warrior and aeons-old being, gently handling the only plant that survived the scuffle. He's covered in blood that's not his and Dean can make out the handle of his blade in his coat pocket. 

"You gonna adopt it?" Dean asks, idly kicking a piece of stray terracotta with his right foot. 

"I guess so," Cas sighs a little bit as he gets up from the floor, more from the balancing act of holding the plant than from any physical effort. "it may have survived all this but it's looking a little worse for wear and I'm confident I could care for it." The plant is fairly young still: there are about four or five leaves growing from it and it's banged up but it looks like it'll survive.

"Not like anybody will be coming back for it anyway," Dean tips his chin in the direction of the corpse sprawled in the corner of the room, in a pile of glass and dirt and viscera. 

On the drive home, Dean looks over at Cas in the passenger seat, holding the small plant he wrapped in one of Dean's flannels before they set off. He holds it delicately, not just because it's hurt and fragile but because Cas is just like that with everything; holds all things like they are precious and deserving of all the care in the world. He's good at taking care of broken things, Dean thinks, whether it's plants he found on the floor or damned souls he pulled out of Hell. 

Dean's throat seizes up ever so slightly and he turns the music up before he can follow that thought further. 

***

"How was the job?" Sam asks over breakfast the morning after they get back — they'd pulled into the bunker in the middle of the night and tiptoed inside trying not to wake him up. 

Dean looks up from his scrambled eggs. "Eh, routine stuff," he sets his fork down and winces at how his shoulder aches when he moves to pour himself more coffee. "Cas found a weed plant." 

Sam squints. "A weed plant." 

"Yeah, I mean it's about as big as your head," Dean gestures with his coffee mug, to which Sam rolls his eyes. "I guess it's legal in Colorado so people are growing it." 

"You tell him what weed does or are you just letting him think it's a pretty plant?" 

Dean blinks. "I'm pretty sure he knows."

***

_2014_

Dean wouldn't call himself a stoner by any stretch of the imagination, but he knows his way around a joint. Money means he's never really bought his own weed but he's found himself in plenty of back alleys and parties where a joint or a bong got passed around; sometimes a pot brownie. 

So when he gets handed an unlit, expertly-rolled joint in a shitty cabin in Camp Chitaqua, it's not that he's intimidated. It's more the fact that his future self (according to Zachariah, anyway) is sitting across the room from him, holding a beer and cleaning his guns in the exact same way he does, with his process and weird techniques and tricks. Seeing himself from the outside is a way trippier experience than any amount of pot, Dean thinks. 

Regardless, the version of Cas who's sitting next to him on the futon slash couch slash surface he definitely wouldn't want to shine a black light on takes it as a sign he is in fact intimidated. 

"Getting cold feet?" Cas asks, and he's looking him right in the eye the same way the Cas Dean knows always does but it feels much more intense; there's something else swirling in there that he can't really place and it makes his insides swim. 

"Nah, 's just...This is so fuckin' weird, man." Dean sighs with the joint still in his hand. He rolls it idly between his thumb and index finger.

Cas quirks his eyebrow at him; "this?" he has the nerve to ask like he doesn't know what Dean's talking about. 

Dean lets out an empty, quiet laugh. "There are about ten things in this room alone I'm probably gonna need a lifetime to process, but I'm pretty sure _this_ —" he points at Cas with the joint, "is breaking my brain the most." 

"Mhm," Cas hums, and he runs his hand across his bearded chin idly. "Past me certainly wouldn't have been the type to do this." 

Dean echoes his own question at him with a smirk and says, "this?" 

Despite the fact the version of Cas sitting next to him couldn't be further from the one who told him off for wasting his minutes what now feels like a thousand years ago, the back and forth feels easy. Maybe it's because it's the end of the world or the fact his three-day stint in Croatoanland is about halfway done— either way, it feels natural. 

Cas doesn't respond to the taunt and instead takes the joint from between Dean's fingers, doesn't stop looking him straight in the eye when their hands touch and only breaks eye contact when he lights it. The flame paints his face in orange hues, specks of gold reflecting in his beard. Dean doesn't look away. He watches Cas take a long hit, sees his cheeks hollow and his eyelids fall half-closed. Suddenly time feels like syrup. 

Dean half-snaps out of it when Cas shifts his weight and moves close to him, puts his right hand on Dean's knee like it's the most normal thing in the world.

"I bet he wouldn't do this," he breathes into Dean's ear, and when Dean turns their faces are only apart for a short moment before Cas takes another hit of the joint and presses his lips to Dean's open mouth to exhale the smoke there. 

Dean's been on either end of shotgunning before— he knows lips don't need to touch when you do it, knows Cas could have just formed a tunnel with his hands instead, but he's finding it difficult to bring himself to care. Cas fists his hand through his shirt and half-climbs into his lap and he's loose and lazy about it like they've got all the time in the world. 

A day and a half later, Dean watches Cas walk to his death for his future self like it's the easiest thing he's ever done. _The only thing we have left, Dean and me, is each other_ rings in his ears louder than the gunfire. 

*** 

_2009_

For the first time in his life, Dean buys his own weed. Cas doesn’t get it, not really, but– well. It’s almost comforting to see him be clueless about it, sat next to him in the backseat. He’s doing that thing where Dean can tell he’s studying him, not judging but definitely cataloguing him. 

They’ve been on the road for a few days, just the two of them; after Cas pulled him out of that hotel room he’d tried calling Sam but only got his voicemail. He’s still figuring shit out. Dean can’t say he was expecting Cas to stay but he did, almost as if he could sense that Dean was shaky on his feet. They've just wrapped up a quick case of possession in WA, somewhere off the 405 near Seattle.

“And this will help you relax?” Cas asks, earnestly.

Dean smiles at him. “That’s the idea.”

He's felt tense all day in a way that he hasn't been able to kick with the adrenaline rush that comes with hunting and it had been all too easy to find a dive and buy the information about the local plug with a smile in a fuck it spur-of-the-moment decision. Which is how he ended up here, parked in some isolated alley with an angel watching him dig out a gas station lighter to light a joint.

"You know if you're stressed, I could put you to sleep," Cas offers.

Dean laughs while he exhales smoke. "Yeah, I guess you could," he leans back against the backseat, watching the way Cas sits straight still. "but I like doin' this from time to time."

Cas— he regards him. Dean's eyelids are falling half-closed already; the weed isn't particularly strong or good but hotboxing always gets to him fast, and not just because of the enclosed space. It conjures up memories of doing this in hookups' cars when he was on the road on his own and the rush of endorphins as the smoke mixed with sweat and sex comes back to him now, like secondhand smoke. It doesn't matter that it's the first time he's done this in the Impala; the pavlovian response hits him anyway, low in his gut. 

Not that Cas knows any of that, looking at him with a shitty flickering streetlamp reflected in his all-too-earnest blue eyes. Dean can barely take those eyes on him when he's sober; it's too much, the way Cas always looks at him like he's something worth looking at, but he's starting to feel loose from the weed and everything is softer around the edges including him, so he looks back.

"Does it make you feel good?" Cas asks with a small tilt of his head, and Dean sees a flash of him doing the same head tilt at him in Detroit a week ago five years from now that makes him breathe hard. 

He tries for an answer for what feels like too long; Cas has been alive for centuries and has seen more than Dean will ever dream of but he's asking him like he genuinely could learn something from him. Dean swallows before he answers. "It chills me out. Makes my brain shut the fuck up for once. 's'nice." 

"Like alcohol?" He watches Dean the whole time while he waits for an answer.

"Nah," Dean exhales. There's one or two pulls left on this joint, maybe a couple more if he makes them small. "Alcohol is more like...lights out, see ya tomorrow. This stuff— it makes bein' awake nicer. Like right now...everythin's soft." 

Dean knows he's rambling, can hear himself talk in circles because he's high, but Cas still looks at him like he's making perfect sense.

"Soft," Cas echoes. He shifts in the backseat slightly, like he's thinking. "like the way the earth felt in the Cretaceous era. I see," he says more to himself than anything else.

"Sure, man," Dean laughs like he has any fucking idea what Cas is talking about.

"Then I can see why you enjoy this. The Cretaceous was my favourite period."

Dean fakes a noise of hurt. "You wound me, Cas."

"It was beautiful," a wistful smile pulls at Cas' mouth."this era is...strange. And loud."

Rain beats down on the roof of the car, drowning out the road in the distance. Dean stares at Cas, at the small wrinkle in between his eyebrows he gets when he's thinking and his messed-up tie, and he says, "Okay."

Cas gives him an inquisitive look. "Okay," Dean repeats, not sure if it's to Cas or to himself. "I think we can do something about that." He tips his chin at the near-finished joint in his hand. "Yeah?"

For a second Cas looks like he's considering it, then he says, "I suppose," and Dean figures he doesn't have enough weed left to teach Cas how to smoke properly without having to roll another joint and he feels too high to do that, right now, so he shuffles closer to him instead.

If déjà vu in reverse hits him it's nobody's business.

"Open your mouth," he tells Cas softly, and he _does_ is the worst part of it. This doesn't mean anything, Dean reassures himself softly. 

Dean pulls on the joint and inhales what's left of it, opens the window just enough to flick it outside before he rolls it back up, and when he turns around he puts his mouth right on Castiel's and exhales. He knows lips don't need to touch when you do it just like he did five years from now.

He's not really sure when he ends up in Cas' lap but he does, his thighs loosely bracketing Cas' hips and his arms slung over the back of the seat. Cas kisses him lazy and deep and sloppy, his hands on Dean's hips. Time, again, turns liquid.

It feels like it goes on forever and Dean can tell Cas is getting high when he pulls away, sees the dopey smile on his face. "Dean," Cas breathes, pulling him closer.

"I've got you," Dean tells him, his right hand in Cas' hair. "C'mere." He kisses him again and puts his tongue in Cas' mouth this time, feels him hum into it when he rolls his hips slowly.

Cas' hands travel across the expanse of his back before his left hand fists into the front of Dean's shirt while his right hand settles on his hip, pulling him in, inviting Dean to drown into the touch, and Dean does. At this point he has no idea which part of the high is coming from the weed and what's coming from how Cas is bucking his hips up to meet him, grinding achingly slow. It's not nearly enough but it's perfect — they're both a mess of loose limbs and when Dean has to catch his breath Cas tongues at his jaw and Dean goes completely boneless.

He huffs out a low noise from the back of his throat, tightens his grip in Cas' hair, and then—

Dean's phone starts ringing, long-forgotten somewhere else in the backseat, and that snaps him out of it somehow; the moment shatters, spell broken.

"Shit," Dean swears, awkwardly climbing out from Cas' lap. "Hey, Sammy," he says into his phone when he finally finds it.

Cas' hair is the messiest he's ever seen it and his tie is almost all the way undone and Dean almost can't look at him. Dean sighs. "No, yeah, I'm alright, just— yeah, I overdid the whiskey," he lies. "I can drive up in the morning after I've had some sleep and we can talk."

There's a pause and Dean rolls down the window. "Of course. See ya tomorrow," he tells Sam, and then he hangs up.

"So." He starts, still barely looking at Cas. His mouth feels dry. "I, uh.."

Cas smiles the most understanding smile in the world, and Dean kind of wants to punch him in the face for it. "I understand. Get some rest and talk to your brother. I'm sure I'll see you soon."

Then he's gone and Dean just slumps down into the seat, runs a hand over his face. The realisation he's totally screwed hits him at the same time as the cool night air makes its way in from the open window; he's half-hard and high and he's in love with an angel.

***

Dean shuffles out of his room one morning to see Cas carrying grow lights into the bunker. It's been about a week since they got back from Colorado and he knows Cas ordered the lights online, remembers him talking about it over breakfast the day after they got back while he was still feeling hungover from the drive; Cas is always like that, ready with an encyclopedic-level of research on any project he's thinking of starting. Especially since Sam showed him how to make spreadsheets.

And the thing is Dean wouldn't let anyone else talk his ear off about grow lights and fertilising and watering schedules. But he loves the way Cas' eyes light up when he's detailing his latest project while he listens and asks a question here and there over breakfast or a while he nurses a beer. He likes to watch him work too, the way Cas' brow furrows when he's focused.

Cas is a builder, a maker; he loves rolling up his sleeves when they're not on hunts, which are few and far between now.

Last summer Dean complained about how the shelves in his room weren't functional enough, and a couple of days later Cas marched in with new wood that was somehow exactly what Dean wanted and built him new ones while Dean sat on his bed and watched. Dean brought him a beer in the middle of the afternoon and thought about how it felt like home.

***

He forgets about the weed until there’s a knock at his bedroom door one afternoon a handful of months later after Sam leaves with Eileen on a hunt Jody needs backup for. The door opens to reveal Cas, who’s got a jar full of nugs in his hand that's labelled 'Colorado #2' in his neat handwriting.

"Woah," Dean lets out when he walks in. "If this is #2, how many did you get from that one plant?"

Cas smiles. "About four jars." He sets the container down on Dean’s desk and looks up at him. "I didn't expect such a big harvest, but I guess I underestimated how much it would grow."

"Must be that angel green thumb," Dean jokes, then he rubs at the back of his neck thinking about what they're going to do with the weed. Smoke it, obviously, but— well. Dean isn't a scared thirty-year-old anymore, he's on the wrong side of thirty-five and he's had plenty of time to get to grips with what and who he wants, but something gnaws at him about missed windows and opportunities. There's always been an excuse or a crisis trumping it, is the thing— the world ending a few times and demons and holy wars. But now, with nothing on the horizon for the next while, Dean can tell a window is opening; he's just not sure it's what Cas wants anymore.

He sits up on his bed and looks at him, at the way he's wearing a t-shirt that says 'real men make latkes' that Dean is pretty sure was a belated Chanukah joke gift and some thrifted jeans. He keeps looking at him when Cas walks around the bed to sit next to him.

Cas pulls some rolling paper and a rainbow pot leaf-patterned grinder out of his pocket. "Before you say anything," he starts, "this was somehow the least hideous one the store had."

"There's a stoner store in Lebanon? Between the church and the other church?"

"Asshole," Cas shakes his head, but he's smiling. "I found a 'smoke shop' in Salina. After he saw me looking at them, the shop owner practically handed me this one."

Dean snorts. "I mean, he wasn't exactly wrong," he flashes Cas a grin. "you do have awful taste."

Cas gives him a glare that's more fond than annoyed. It's a look Dean sees more and more these days, something Cas never did when they first met that flourished over the years, and it bowls him over every time. He watches while Cas works the grinder a few times with his fingers and thinks about Castiel, cosmic being, watching a video tutorial on it. He thinks about how Cas' hands have been bringers of destructions and miracles and now he uses them to grind weed and make shelves and water plants. Well, not always these exact hands, as Cas would probably remind him, but the point stands, regardless.

He hands Dean the grinder and paper when he's done and Dean rests his back against the headboard while he rolls. He wets the edges of the paper with his tongue and finds Cas looking at him, which in and of itself is something he's used to, but there's something charged in the way he looks at him, in the way his eyes dart slightly downwards to follow his tongue.

Before he can overthink it, Dean flashes his signature flirting smile and finishes rolling the joint. "Ladies first," he says when he hands it to Cas.

Cas fishes a lighter —black, no outrageous pattern this time— out of his pocket. It sputters when he tries to get it to light and he makes a frustrated noise around the joint in his mouth. Dean reaches into his bedside table and fishes out a zippo he got in the middle of who knows where.

"Here," he offers, shuffling closer to Cas and lighting the end of the joint for him. Cas hums in response and the air feels thick before he ever breathes out any smoke.

Dean sits back and watches his cheeks hollow out while he takes a toke, and when he exhales he passes it back to him. They sit there in comfortable silence a while, passing it back and forth and getting pleasantly high until Dean sees the telltale signs of Cas being lost in thought.

"What're you thinking about?" Dean asks after he's done taking a pull. 

"West Bellevue, Washington," Cas answers after a beat, not looking at him. "the way rain smells different in the Pacific Northwest."

"Cas," Dean starts, but it dies in his throat. He can't tell if the hoarseness in his voice is from smoking alone.

Cas still isn't looking at him. "I think about it a lot, these days."

"Yeah?" Dean swallows. He puts out the joint and sets it aside and it hits him that this is it.

"I think about building a cabin in the woods. How some of the trees there are over a thousand years old. I think about how even though I had lived a lifetime by the time those trees were seedlings, it feels like we were so young the last time we were there." He pauses as if he's looking for his words. "I think about how I knew what I wanted then, but the picture is clearer now."

He finally looks at Dean. “I don’t know how to do this,” Cas confesses. “I know how to build and heal, but this—” He nervously tugs at his t-shirt collar.

“Okay,” Dean says, and for the first time in eight years, he kisses Cas. The truth is, he doesn't know how to do this either, but Cas is right. Last time he walked the streets of Seattle he had no idea what to do with the way he wanted Cas, but now it's been nearly a decade of "almost", of almost going for it, of almost dying, of almost kissing each other stupid before the latest catastrophe reared its head, and Dean refuses to let the window close again.

The angle is awkward at first with them sitting side by side but then Cas grabs at the front of his shirt and pulls Dean into his lap, and Dean lets out a low, wanting noise from the back of his throat. It's been years since anybody's grabbed him like this outside of a fight; on the rare occasions Dean's gone out of his way to get laid in the past few years people have just assumed he'd be the one doing the throwing around. And he doesn't mind, not always, but Cas' hands on him are just what he's been aching for and he's dizzy with it.

He's just about to kiss Cas again after catching his breath when a hand on his chest stops him. "Everything okay?" Dean asks.

"More than okay," Cas smiles. "It's just..." he bites his bottom lip before he speaks again, and for a second Dean worries that he's ruined everything, but then— "can I shotgun you?"

Dean's brain short circuits and he's saying yes before he's really conscious of the words coming out of his mouth. He sees a flash of that other Cas, telling him that his other self wouldn't do this. But Cas is here, messy hair and five-o-clock shadow, and he's lighting the joint Dean discarded earlier, pulling the smoke into his mouth and turning to Dean after he sets it back down.

He exhales into Dean's mouth and pushes him backwards until he's flat on his back, the mattress shifting when he climbs over him. Dean breathes hard, looks up at him through semi-closed eyelids and watches Cas lean in to run his right hand over his face almost reverently. His fingers come to ghost over his lips and Dean opens his mouth, sucks Cas' index and middle finger between his lips.

"Fuck," Cas lets out, and it always does things to him when he swears but especially now that the high is hitting him again and he can taste Cas' skin on his tongue and Dean moans in response.

He grabs Cas' wrist and takes his fingers out of his mouth, wipes his spit on his chin. "Cas," he croaks out, then, halfway into a moan, "please."

Cas has seen Dean with black eyes and covered in blood, but the sight of him completely boneless underneath him sloppy and hungry with want makes his brain short out. He takes off his shirt and all but tears Dean's shirt off before he leans down to kiss him again, deep and full of tongue. Cas kisses at his neck and Dean is like putty in his hands; their hips grind together lazy and filthy and perfect.

Being high makes Dean feel like every sensation is amplified tenfold, he knows this, but he surprises himself at how loud he moans when Cas fingers him— he's always been loud but he didn't know he had these sounds in him anymore, and when Cas twists his wrist at a particular angle and hits his prostate dead on over and over and over, unrelenting, he comes with a scream that's only muffled by Cas' shoulder against his face.

Cas pulls his fingers out of him, wipes lube off on the sheets and idly runs his hands up and down Dean's ribs, lying on his side next to him.

"Shit," Dean breathes once he feels like he can talk again. "where the fuck did you learn that?"

Cas lets out a small laugh and kisses his shoulder. "Ancient Greece, mostly," he says into Dean's skin.

"Of course," Dean rubs a hand across his face, smiling unbearably wide.

"I can show you more of what I've learned," Cas offers as he kisses higher up Dean's neck, until his mouth is level with his ear. "If you want, I can use my Grace to skip your refractory period."

Dean's response is to pull Cas on top of him and wrap his hand around Cas' dick while he kisses him hard, biting his bottom lip. "What're you waiting for?" he asks when they pull apart.

There's a brief moment before Cas moves inside him where they just look at each other through fucked-out eyes, then he pulls nearly all the way out and slams back into Dean, and the whole world disappears. Dean wraps his legs tight around his waist, bringing him closer, inviting him home, and he feels so overstimulated from coming not twenty minutes ago that he's leaving red scratches on his back while Cas grips his hips hard enough to bruise.

The rhythm they find is slow and solid, deep enough that the bed hits the wall hard on every other thrust of Cas' hips, sending various things on Dean's shelf collapsing at the same time as the both of them are, coming apart together.

"I love you," Dean lets out in between two thrusts. It's been building up in his chest for years, taking root like an evergreen tree burrowing deep in the soil of his life.

Cas comes inside him with a snap of his hips and he doesn't pull out when he reaches between them to wrap a hand around Dean; he moves his fist in ragged, desperate pulls, rests their foreheads together. "I love you too," he breathes, inches from Dean's mouth. "You're the most beautiful thing this world has ever seen."

That's when Dean loses it— the weight of all the things Cas has seen and experienced, aeons of existence he couldn't ever possibly comprehend, and yet. He can almost touch Cas' devotion like it's a palpable thing and he comes again with a dozen prayers on his lips, the world going white-hot as Cas touches him through it.

"You think normal people fuck before or after they die for each other?" Dean asks afterwards, an arm slung around Cas' waist, tracing the tattoo under his ribs with his head on his chest.

Cas laughs and Dean feels it against his cheek. "Here's to a life of never being normal," he tells him softly, and, well, Dean can't exactly argue with that.

**Author's Note:**

> i would love to know what you thought, and you can also find me on [tumblr](https://tallahasseemp3.tumblr.com)


End file.
